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ODRUARD
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Calculating with offline Boinc agents

Hello Community,

First, sorry if this is a duplicate question.
English is not my native language, then perhaps I didn't use the right keywords in the search engine.

I have several devices with a lot of available computing capacity, however they are (and must stay) connected to an isolated network which is not connected to any other network (no router, no proxy, no gateway, no firewall).
Is there a way to perform calculation with devices which cannot connect to the internet ?

For example, maybe there is a way to download a lot of works from any connected computer, to copy them through a usb media to the offline devices, to let the devices calculate the results, to copy the results on the connected computer and to send results to World Community Grid from this connected computer.
Or any other way...

Any idea is welcome.

Thanks all.
Olivier
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KerSamson
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

Hi Olivier,
I understand well your interest and your volunteering however I do not see any practicable way for achieving your objective.
Grid computing - by design - relies on network infrastructure and on the ability to connect to network / internet for downloading work and uploading results.
Even if you would try to "fool" boinc resp. WCG using a connected "shadow" crunching machine and manually distributing the WU on the non-connected machines and later collecting manually the computed work for reporting it over the front-end "shadow" machine, this approach will not be very reliable (think for example about the result validation) and it will be highly time consuming for you regarding the necessary manual work.
Maybe some other members could propose some valuable ideas regarding your question? ...
Thank you for your contribution.
Happy crunching,
Yves
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Former Member
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

The process is called BOINC Sneakernet, but you don't read much about this art form these days. A quick search hits on one process dersciption at https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=81632

Doable, the only security concern is keeping the transport medium and netfacing host clean.
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PMH_UK
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

Be aware that copying files by USB or CD/DVD between the internet connected system and the isolated network risks copying virus or other malware.
The network was isolated for reasons such as this.
If you are not the owner you need written permission from them.
With permission you would be better off using a firewall to alllow connection from the isolated network to just WCG.
This could be a dedicated firewall appliance or a system running BSD or Linux with 2 ethernet ports and firewall configured.

Paul.
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Paul.
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ODRUARD
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

KerSamson, thanks, you confirm what I was afraid about.
lavaflow, I was aware of the possibility to use a portable version of Boinc. I used such a way some years ago, however there were no way to download a large volume of work and then it was needed to frequently reconnect the portable version to the internet for works renewal.
PMH_UK, thanks for your warnings. I'm the owner then no permission is needed, but it's nice to draw attention to this point.

Olivier
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Former Member
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

Actually the only part that needs to be 'portable' is the BOINC data directory and a host that has dual client installation [if the host is meant to compute too when not used as intermediate file transfer agent], 1 client pointing to the portable medium, set to not compute but networking active during the upload/download phase, making sure to suspend BOINC networking as else you risk the connect counter to go off kilter.

Apart from that a little rigor in discipline such as alternating the clients between online and offline, where the offline client machines are 'always' set to offline.

Buffering is probably practical up to 5-6 days computing worth where the shortest standard deadline is 7 days, obviously excluding FAHB/FAH2 which is just 24 hours.

The hassle comes with lots of satisfaction of course if adding 16-32 and more threads being put to volunteer computing use.
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BobbyB
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

If that network is air-gaped for some reason then I would suggest not trying anything to defeat this.
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KerSamson
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

On my side, after a rigorous risk assessment, if the risks are acceptable, I would prefer a dedicated firewall-based approach instead of moving data manually using USB device (so called: "Adidas network" i.e. per pedibus).
Manual data moving is both time consuming AND risky.
Cheers,
Yves
---
PS: The term "Adidas network" comes originally from a friend of mine who is pharmaceutical GMP inspector. I like this term and I use it in my trainings and audits wink
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by KerSamson at Jul 20, 2020 8:21:46 AM]
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hchc
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Re: Calculating with offline Boinc agents

distributed.net allows for sneakernetting the work units like this. I used to do it on 3.5" floppy disk back in 2001.
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  • i5-4590 (Haswell, 4C/4T) @ 3.3 GHz
  • i5-3570 (Broadwell, 4C/4T) @ 3.4 GHz

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